What second hand laptop should I buy?
What second hand laptop should I buy?
My use case: I'm an engineering student, I need something with a lot of storage, hopefully SSD (right not I have MatLab, Anaconda and KiCAD taking up most of my 128 GB HD, and I had to uninstall the STM32 cube IDE from lack of storage), and reasonable processing performance so I can actually run these things at a reasonable rate. I need to stay within the windows/ms office world to simplify collaborating and file sharing etc. I'm not using it for gaming. Don't need a massive screen, or touchscreen or anything fancy. HDMI port would be reasonably important.
I want it to last me at least the next 4-5 years, and I'm hoping to not spend more than about £300.
I know a lot of people reccomend ThinkPads, what's a good model to get cheap at the moment? Or any other suggestions?
Is Windows 11 so bad that I should only be looking at ones that come with Windows 10 installed?
Thanks for any helpful advice!
Edit: Thanks to everyone for taking the time to advise me, I've ordered a refurbished T480 with 1TB ssd, plenty of ram, and a 1 year warranty for £340.
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I have a Thinkpad T480 and I'm very happy with it. I paid about $250 (~£190) for mine. It came with 16 GB RAM, but is upgradable to 32 GB. The one I bought came with a 128 GB SSD, but I swapped it out for a 1 TB drive which added another $100 (~£76) to my initial investment. This model originally came with Windows 10 and most on the market will come with it, but can be updated to 11 if desired.
I personally have not used Win11 since they made some changes I don't like, so I can't really give you advice on that aspect.
ThinkPad T480 gang represent! I'm definitely happy with mine.
The T480 can take 64gb of ram, but it's probably overkill
Thank you for the correction. I try to be as accurate as possible when providing information, but I misremembered the specs.
Well, if you are in the market for a smaller laptop, don't buy the x280, as it isn't upgradable, buy a Latitude 5290 with the same specs as t480, but with a horrendous display and no trackpoint. It has decent build quality and the same upgradability as the t480. You could find it used under 200$ easily.
Thanks, yeah I've gone for a t480 in the end. I think prices are slightly higher for hardware over here than in the US, but I feel I got a good deal as long as it all works properly when it arrives.